In recent years, various types of information processing apparatuses including handwriting input functions have started to be widely used. For example, an electronic whiteboard using a display device that includes a touch panel provided on the display screen makes it unnecessary to use a pen filled with ink, that is, a consumable, and makes it possible to simply record handwritten content as digitized image data.
Further, recently, for example, an electronic whiteboard configured to recognize a color of a writing tool by utilizing an image recognition technique and display written content to which the color obtained as the recognition result is attached is proposed.
In order to recognize a color of a writing tool used for inputting to a touch panel based on an image, a certain length of time is required. Therefore, in the electronic whiteboard or the like, when written content to which the color obtained as the recognition result is attached is displayed, a time lag until the written content is displayed after writing will become great.
Generally, in the electronic whiteboard or the like, a measure for coping with erroneous recognition at the image recognition time is not carefully considered. Therefore, for example, if the color of content is erroneously recognized as a color different from blue although the content is written with a blue writing tool, it becomes necessary to repeatedly erase the content displayed with the erroneous color and write the content again (until the content color is correctly recognized as blue). That is, in practice, it is not considered at all to take a measure for automatically making recovery without depending on the above human recovery although erroneous recognition will inevitably occur to some extent in image recognition.
Further, recently, a touch panel that copes with multi-touch for simultaneously receiving a plurality of inputs becomes dominant, but generally, the electronic whiteboard or the like does not cope with a plurality of simultaneous inputs. Therefore, if the conventional method is applied as it is, there occurs a possibility that a reflection destination of the recognition result is erroneously set and the recognition precision is markedly degraded when contents are simultaneously written in close positions on the board with black and red writing tools by two users, for example.
Therefore, in the information processing apparatus, including the electronic whiteboard described before, including the handwriting input function, it is strongly required to provide a mechanism that cancels the time lag until the written content is displayed after writing, automatically makes recovery from the erroneous recognition and maintains the recognition precision at a constant level even at the time of plural simultaneous inputs.